Zoa colony being super weird

[CmMagenta]

I bought a large live rock that had a zoa colony covering one side. It was an ugly dull brown with tiny bits of orange but it was really cheap so I grabbed it. The green star on the other side is what I really wanted. Plus I needed to see if I could keep anything alive in the new aquarium. Here we are a month later and it’s still alive but completely changed color everywhere. The front is now a pretty purple and the back is neon orange. It has new growth in both sides that’s even brighter colors. I have no idea which side is the healthy side or why. It’s the same colony. I took a picture of the location compared to the light (radion pro on soft color settings). It’s very hard to get a good picture, but I loaded the closest representation I was capable of getting. I would great appreciate any suggestions or thoughts on this madness!

 

[Fish Think Pink]

I bought a large live rock that had a zoa colony covering one side. It was an ugly dull brown with tiny bits of orange but it was really cheap so I grabbed it. The green star on the other side is what I really wanted. Plus I needed to see if I could keep anything alive in the new aquarium. Here we are a month later and it’s still alive but completely changed color everywhere. The front is now a pretty purple and the back is neon orange. It has new growth in both sides that’s even brighter colors. I have no idea which side is the healthy side or why. It’s the same colony. I took a picture of the location compared to the light (radion pro on soft color settings). It’s very hard to get a good picture, but I loaded the closest representation I was capable of getting. I would great appreciate any suggestions or thoughts on this madness!

Congratulations!

Aren't you super lucky to score that find! It's not often that ugly duckling becomes swan degrees of differences like you have happening, but yet some change is normal and to be expected. When I got my rainbow infusion zoas I was positive I was sold/bought wrong thing (felt cheated) as they didn't look anything like mother colonies I loved... but fast forward 2 months and they started looking more like original colony and 6 months after that they'd qualify as a clone of mother colony (both color and even size/qnty of zoas!)

 

[anthonygf]

Nice rock. But those Green Star Polyps will overtake your pretty zoa's. What you should do, this is something I would do myself is cut the rock in half somewhere in the middle where the GSP merge with zoa's and scrape the GSP off the rock of the zoa's. Keep the GSP away to keep from spreading, they can outgrow everything. Make sure if you do this keep the rock submerged, wear goggles. Whatever zoa polyps remain after scraping you can remount to frag plugs and start new colonies. Good luck!